‘I guess,’ she said, ‘but I still think a little extra encouragement wouldn’t do any harm.’

I really thought it might, but once Hope had a bee in her bonnet, I knew it was impossible to flush it out until she was ready to let it go.

‘What are you thinking?’ I tentatively asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, biting her lip, ‘but you’ll help, won’t you?’

I didn’t know what to say. On the one hand I wanted to follow George’s sage advice and let the situation carve out its own course, but on the other, I wouldn’t have minded hurrying things on a bit. And, I reasoned with myself, it probably wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye out, just from the sidelines, to make sure Hope didn’t do anything too obvious or OTT. Given what was at stake, I didn’t want to see any of my friends getting hurt further, especially as they’d now started to find their way back to each other.

‘Oh god, Tess,’ she said, noisily dropping her clipboard and making me jump before I had even tried to form an answer. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I shouldn’t even be asking you,’ she said, slapping her forehead in frustration. ‘I keep forgetting that you’re here on holiday.’

‘Sometimes so do I,’ I told her.

That was totally true, because the more time I spent in Wynmouth, the harder it was to believe that I had another life somewhere else. A life that I was going to have to face up to at some point in the not too distant future, whether I wanted to or not.

‘It’s because you feel so much like one of us,’ Hope smiled.

‘I do?’

‘Yes,’ she laughed, ‘you do. These days, you feel like more of a local, than some of the locals!’

‘Sometimes,’ I admitted, getting carried away and thinking how wonderful it would be to live in Wynmouth forever, ‘I wish I was.’

‘You just fit in so well,’ she told me, her smile then disappearing as quickly as it had arrived. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go.’

I swallowed hard and blinked away the tears her kind words had prompted.

‘Same,’ I whispered.

She came over and grasped my hand and I could almost hear the cogs whirring as she chewed her lip and frowned, deep in concentration. I was a little afraid of what she was going to say next.

‘Stay longer then!’ she wildly suggested. ‘Ask Sam to let you stay in the cottage for the whole of the summer.’

I suddenly remembered that I had already asked him if he would consider lengthening our agreement, but given what happened after, the subject hadn’t been broached again.

‘But he wants to take the cottage off the rental market,’ I reminded Hope, squeezing her hand before she let mine go.